If you are nearing retirement, you should already have moved some of your portfolio into low volatility assets. Those are the ones you should then be prepared t

If you are nearing retirement, you should already have moved some of your portfolio into low volatility assets. Those are the ones you should then be prepared to draw on in the immediately coming years. Retirement shouldn't viewed as an event. You don't just cash your chips one day. It will be a phase of life where you have to continue to do a mixture of short term and long term planning. The more volatile assets, if sensibly diversified, were not "wiped out" in 2008. The paper value dropped but then rebounded. As a GenX worry wort, I watched my own retirement account do this dance. I also watched my cash accounts slowly deteriorate against inflation. I am too risk averse to have gone all-in on the stock market even in my younger years, so had a portfolio mix more like someone 15-20 years older. If I'd been forced to live off my multi-year cache equivalent reserves, my 401K equivalent investments had mostly bounced back before I had to think about tapping any. What was the worst in 2008 were those who had gone all-in on the housing market and turned out upside-down. And, those who still counted on a pension as a large part of their retirement plan and saw their pension providers going bankrupt. Those were really wiped out.